Whodunit? Wellington Webb

by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

         Unless you've been in a sensory deprivation tank for the last 48 hours, you know that a couple of evil young creatures entered the Columbine High School Tuesday morning in Littleton -- a town where my daughter skates competitively every year -- and murdered something on the order of twenty-five of their fellow human beings, wounding many more.
         A number of things need to be said about this event. The first is, don't emulate the media morons by wringing your hands and asking why it happened. There is no "why". This was a psychotic crime for which, by definition, there can be no comprehensible motive. Notice that I'm not saying the killers weren't responsible. Psychotics talk themselves into their psychoses with a staggering dedication and persistence.
         Equally obvious is the fact that if even two or three of the targeted students had been carrying competent weapons of their own, this never would have happened -- it would probably never have begun in the first place. These vermin were counting on their victims to be helpless, and helpless they were -- made that way by politicians who have plenty of reasons of their own for wanting their constituents helpless.
         What? Am I suggesting that kids carry guns? Sure. I wouldn't trust public school teachers to tie children's shoes, let alone defend them.
         I'm also invariably suspicious when spree-killers like these are found oh-so-conveniently dead at the end of their spectacular display, unable to comment articulately on their heinous crime or to inform us who put them up to it. I'm even more suspicious when what they do -- like bringing guns to school -- has been the specific object of endless weeks, months, or years of harping from leftist politicians and the round heeled, hairsprayed, fearmongering airheads in the mass media.
         I'm even more suspicious when the photogenic bloodletting occurs at the very moment that the legislature is enthusiastically debating "liberalizing" gun laws -- an appropriate choice of phrase meaning that they're preparing to graciously permit us to beg them for their official permission to exercise our basic human and Constitutional rights. Following a background check, of course, along with a hearty fingerprinting, a rousing urine test, a robust rectal examination, and a two or three hundred dollar fine for daring to believe we're still Americans.
         I'm most suspicious of all, when a President best known for taking sexual advantage of his semi-retarded employees, raping women on two continents, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down from the Arkansas Attorney General's office to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, selling his nation's military secrets for campaign contributions, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him, bombing thousands to death overseas to punish us for questioning his authority, murdering 82 men, women, and children in broad daylight, on national TV, then putting the survivors on trial and when they're acquitted, pressuring a corrupt federal judge into sending them to jail anyway ... where was I?
         Right -- when a President rushes onto the nation's airwaves with a statement that sounds like it was prepared hours before the shootings, trying to turn a local travesty, one that glaringly demonstrates the utter failure of his policies, into justification for ... who knows what?
         It's just too good. Rich kids (stir up the old class envy, there!) with black trenchcoats (too expensive -- shoulda been a dress code) practicing a lifestyle the media call "Gothic" (can't have that, now -- everybody oughta look the same so they'll all act the same), listening to rock'n'roll (didn't we warn you about that in the 50s?), and communicating on the internet (that tool of the Devil!) take their guns (hey, wait a minute, didn't we outlaw guns for kids?) and their homemade bombs (no! stop! this isn't going where we wanted it to go at all!) ... Paragraph canceled due to lack of politically correct conclusion.
         And Suspicious Coincidence Number One? Guess who's having their national convention in Denver at the end of the month, a few days from now?
         One thing is beyond dispute. Every one of these deaths is the moral -- and will someday be the legal -- responsibility of Denver mayor Wellington Webb. Every drop of blood in the Littleton shootings is dripping from his hands, as it drips from the hands of every pundit and politico who spent the last few decades doing everything possible to render every adult within his jurisdiction -- let alone every kid -- harmless and helpless.
         This is the moral cripple who has his thugs steal your car if they find a gun or knife in it. Every syllable Webb spoke in his most recent attempt to suppress the Second Amendment ("Denver knows how to make laws for Denver!") came straight from the copybooks of George Wallace and Lester Maddox, with the modern equivalent of Bull Conner to do the enforcing. Every word was karmically transformed into a hollowpoint bullet speeding straight at the heart of one of the poor children -- defenseless at his demand -- who died or was hurt in that school.
         Those killers were acting in Webb's political behalf -- just as they were at Ruby Ridge and Waco, for which he also bears full moral responsibility -- because they were carrying his policies to their ultimate end. When people are disarmed, they're made easy prey for ordinary criminals -- or for governments. This is what we saw at Waco, it is what we're seeing in Yugoslavia, it's what's happened in Littleton.
         Right now, perfectly reasonable people are asking me if it's possible that events like this are created by politicians like Webb and Clinton to prevent the loosening of gun laws or to stampede the passage of more stringent ones. I confess I've asked myself the same question more than once. There are just too many "coincidences" involved.
         The best way for Wellington Webb to dispel suspicions like this before they come to be entertained by a wider group is to renounce his fetish for victim disarmament, stop murdering the children all around him, and leapfrog the cowardly, stupid, and dishonest Republicans in the Colorado legislature by loudly demanding repeal of every law that limits the individual right to own -- and especially to carry -- weapons.
         Let's hear it for Vermont Carry, Mayor -- or do you like being morally responsible for massacres like those at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Littleton?

L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of The Probability Broach, Pallas, Henry Martyn, Bretta Martyn, The Mitzvah (forthcoming, with Aaron Zelman), and 15 other novels. Order them from Amazon.com via http://www.lneilsmith.org//index.html or from Laissez Faire Books at http://www.laissezfaire.org or just call Laissez Faire toll free, 1-800-326-0996

---

From the AP:

"I hope that they will look carefully at what this country did in banning handguns after the Dunblane massacre, and I hope we never have to wake up to this sort of news again from America," Defense Secretary George Robertson told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

         At the rate you poofters are going, George, you'll soon be counting yourselves lucky to wake up at all. Your crime rate is growing faster than ours, much to the dismay of anti-rights fanatics who have used to as an example only as long as it was convenient. Well, the next time the barbarians come knocking at the gate, don't bother asking for Lend-Lease firearms from us. Just smack 'em with a copy of The Times. -- Ed.

---

Next to advance to the next article, or
Table of Contents to return to The Libertarian Enterprise, Number 44, April 21, 1999.

---